This invention relates to a system for accounting for postage costs. More particularly, it relates to such a system for use by high volume mailers.
High volume mailers, mailers who typically mail thousands of pieces of first class mail at a time, incur correspondingly high postage costs and continually seek means to control these costs. Typical of such high volume mailers are credit card companies, banks, utilities, or oil companies; all of whom communicate with a large customer base through first class mail.
To control these costs, high volume mailers have typically invested large sums of money in automatic equipment to handle large mailings. Such equipment typically includes large multi-station intelligent inserter systems which select, assemble and insert appropriate materials into envelopes. To minimize the postage charges, such inserter systems may also determine the postage for each mail piece in a batch of mail to ensure that each mail piece receives no more than the necessary postage. Automatic weighing systems (AWS) to sequentially weigh each mail piece in a batch of mail and compute the appropriate postage have also been proposed. Such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,890,492; for: Postage Value Determining and Control Circuit; to: Manduley et al; issued: June 17, 1975, and 4,497,040; for: Method and Apparatus for Customizing a MultiStation Document Inserter; to: Gomes et al; issued: Jan. 29, 1985, which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Though equipment of this type has provided satisfactory service in the past, a problem arising out of the regulations of various postal services, such as those of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which require that each mail piece be individually franked (i.e., that appropriate indicia be placed on each mail piece indicating the amount of postage paid for that mail piece) remains. Clearly, stamps are an impossible solution for the high volume mailer and prestamped envelopes or permit mail do not allow the mailer to minimize his costs for postage with respect to the weight of the mail pieces. A common solution to this franking problem has been the use of postage meters in conjunction with mail handling equipment of the kinds described above. Mail pieces in a batch of mail would sequentially pass through a postage meter to be imprinted with indicia indicative of the postage determined for each mail piece. (Postage meters are well known devices which may be preset, upon payment to the postal service, with a dollar amount, and then imprint postage indicia in selected amounts up to the preset total.) Though postage meters have proven to be an effective solution to the franking problem they are perceived as having certain problems. Because the postage indicia is mechanically imprinted on each mail piece they tend to slow down the processing a batch of mail, particularly where the postage amount in a batch varies from mail piece to mail piece requiring that the meter be frequently reset to a different postage amount. Further, the meter adds another subsystem to the mail handling equipment whose failure halts operations and prevents the mailer from using postage already paid for. The question of reliability is aggravated by the need to maintain meter security; which means that meters may be only repaired and maintained by the postage meter vendor.
In response to these perceived problems of high volume mailers with postage meters it has been suggested that postal regulations be revised to eliminate the franking requirement for each mail piece and that the postal services accept mail on a manifest basis. That is, the mailer would provide the postal service with a list of each mail piece and the corresponding postage. The mailer would then be billed for the total postage in a lump sum. The postal service could then verify that the total postage was correct by checking each mail piece in the batch against the manifest, or more efficiently by checking a sampling of the batch against the manifest.
There are, however, problems to accounting for postage for large batches of mail. If a manifest is generated by a data processing system which initially generates the information defining the batch, it will include mail pieces which may be accidentally lost in assembling the batch, for example pieces lost in inserter jams.
Also, the amount of information in a manifest or a large batch of mail, which may include thousands or even tens of thousands of mail pieces, is very great. If such large quantities of information were transmitted to the postal service electronically, transmission costs could be substantial and the postal service would require equipment to receive and store large quantities of data. If the information were delivered to the postal service on transportable media such as floppy disks, there would be a possibility of data loss due to damage to the disks which are susceptible to heat, magnetic fields, spilled coffee, etc. Transportation of a complete manifest in a more secure form such as a printout would of course be cumbersome. Problems would also exist in checking the manifest against the actual batch of mail. If a sampling technique were used, the level of confidence which could be placed in a sample would be dependent upon proper selection of that sample, and given the unfamiliarity of postal workers with sampling techniques, errors could well occur in properly checking batches of mail. Problems could also exist for mailers using a manifest to pay for first class mail. High volume mailers are large organizations which typically have internal controls on payments and which may take several days simply to cut a check. If postal service would be willing to eliminate the franking requirement for first class mail and also submit bills for postage, rather than operate on a prepayment basis, high volume mailers would need to institute new procedures for payment for postage.
Accordingly, it is an object of the subject invention to provide a system for accounting for postage costs for large batches of mail which will accurately reflect the batch as actually assembled.
It is another object of the subject invention to provide a system for accounting for postage costs for high volume mailers on a manifest basis which will substantially reduce the amount of information which must be provided to the postal service.
It is another object of the subject invention to provide a system which will simplify verification of the postage paid on a batch of mail.
It is still another object of the subject invention to provide a system which will simplify payment of postage and will require minimal changes in existing procedures for payment of postage.